I mean you started well with the whole wiping out the injuns thing, but just seemed to lose your taste for it after that. Teddy Roosevelt gave it a go in Cuba and the Philippines and you used to give the Mexicans a good slap from time to time, but you haven't even done any of that lately. Very disappointing.
It's not ruthlessness they lack. Look at their capitalism, black rights, Gitmo bay and treatment of the UK as soon as the War in Asia was won - all show that Johnny Septic is a ruthless ****er.
It's their inability to learn foreign dialects, appreciate cultures (I would say foreign foreign cultures but that would erroneously imply such a thing a domestic American culture existed) and look at a map of the globe with a sense of wonder instead of bewilderment.
Can you imagine your average Septic junior officer actively wanting to learn Gorkhi, Punjabi, Pashto etc?
Backward race, they really are. While Sadhus and Buddhist monks are communing with the Divine on the spiritual planes of consciousness, the Septics are shooting each other up in the name of a middle-Eastern prophet who preached turning the other cheek.